Quentin Tarantino writes, David Fincher directs, Brad Pitt stars – it’s a Once Upon A Time In Hollywood spin-off movie. Reportedly.
When news of this story first emerged, we’d imagine that plenty of film fans simply dismissed it as an April Fool’s joke. But unless most of Hollywood’s most credible reporting sources are all in on it together, this is actually real: David Fincher is set to direct Quentin Tarantino’s script for a Once Upon A Time In Hollywood spin-off. It’s a screenplay that is said to have emerged from the latter filmmaker’s abandoned The Movie Critic project, once billed as his tenth and final film.
Outlets such as Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and The Playlist (who broke the story) are all reporting it as true, and it certainly does fit with the speculation that was flying around a few weeks ago regarding Fincher’s next project for Netflix. It was said to be a collaboration with Brad Pitt on a sequel to a film he didn’t direct. While some may have wondered if that meant a sequel to World War Z had been resurrected, that story does make sense in the context of this emerging one.
As for Quentin Tarantino, it’s been some time since we’ve seen the filmmaker sell a script to another filmmaker. It’s an occurrence that we saw happen a couple of times much earlier in the filmmaker’s career (namely True Romance, directed by Tony Scott, and Natural Born Killers, made by Oliver Stone). Having both Tarantino and Fincher’s name above the line is pretty substantial, and Netflix has reportedly stumped up $200m to make the new Once Upon A Time In Hollywood spin-off happen, and happen quickly.
Leonardo DiCaprio is not expected to return in the follow-up to the 2019 film.
A July shoot is said to be on the slate, so things are moving quickly.
Will the package have been enticing enough to get a promise from the streamer to give this film a wide theatrical release? We’d imagine so, given Quentin Tarantino’s recent comments lambasting the current state of cinema. Calling 2019 ‘the last year of movies’ and slamming the industry for forsaking the theatrical experience before selling a script to Netflix (for a reported $20m) would not be a good look. We suspect a deal would have been struck here in the style of Greta Gerwig’s agreement with the streamer to give her upcoming Narnia films a wide IMAX release.
We’re still waiting for Quentin Tarantino and pals to leap from behind the curtain and yell ‘April Fools!’ on this story, but given that the news broke well after the midday cut-off point, such buffoonery would most definitely be classed as ‘unsanctioned’ and we’d be as mad as Tommy Lee Jones on the set of Batman Forever about it all.
With things seemingly on a fast-track, expect to hear more about this one soon.
